1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to the field of network management. More particularly, the present invention is related to an architecture and method for managing distributed objects as a single representation in an agent-based system.
2. Description
Traditional Internet data centers are characterized as being extensions of corporate data centers with the addition of hardware for Web and e-Commerce servers. Management of traditional Internet data centers consisted of applying constraints and simplifying assumptions of the hardware and its operations. For example, services within a data center might use a client-server object and transport model to simplify the protocols and intelligence supported by the data center.
As businesses continue to make larger investments in the Internet economy, constraints that were once key to the management of Internet data centers are no longer adequate. For example, conventional management tools manage and monitor a limited number of components in the Internet data center, thus leaving the responsibility of event-correlation and resolution options for an operator or administrator to handle.
Today, the growing complexities of deployment, operation, and maintenance of Internet services make management and scalability of Internet data centers very difficult. As Internet services continue to grow, the tasks to be performed by the operator or administrator become more burdensome. To alleviate some of the burdensome tasks required of the operator, management of many of the components of the Internet data center are being automated.
One such architecture for automating management processes is open control technology. Open control technology is a network/service control technology targeted at enterprise level service management. Open control technology architecture describes a structure for managing components of a data center service throughout the service lifecycle. The architecture is deployed as an open control technology pod. The open control technology pod is composed of a controller and a customer pod. The architecture defines an object model that virtualizes the data center. The virtualization is done via abstractions and encapsulation.
A problem associated with the open control technology architecture arises when the customer pod contains a set of cluster resources/services, be it software or hardware, where at least two distinct machines, represented as objects, share a common resource/service. The distinct machines may also contain non-clustered resources/services that also need to be managed and monitored. When clustered resources/services are managed and monitored, the distinct machines or objects need to be represented as a single object. When non-clustered resources/services are managed and monitored, the distinct machines or objects need to be represented as separate objects. Traditional open control technology architecture is not equipped to manage and monitor clustered resources where at least two distinct machines or objects need to be represented as a single object in order to share one or more common resources/services.
Thus, what is needed is an architecture and methodology for representing distinct machines as a single entity or object for enabling the distinct machines to share one or more common resources or services.